Hi all-

Its been a while since I watched this video but at 20:45 he suggests that if you want to play a large chamber it would also make sense to play a bigger tip and harder reed.  He goes on to say you can only move so much air through a smaller tip so "why do you need a big chamber?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De63DLaD3MM&feature=youtu.be

While I couldn't necessarily explain the science of what's going on with the air/waves after moving past the tip and baffle, I've always associated certain timbral colors and qualities with large chamber mouhpieces as opposed to smaller narrow chamber pieces regardless of tip size.

His comments seems a bit arbitrary to me and would love to hear some ideas about what he might be getting at.

matt

There are indeed specific tonal and response characteristics inherent in large or small chambers, regardless of tip opening.  FL's use of the
 mouthpiece-as-wind-tunnel approach in his explainations does not reflect what is actually going on at all, though it would seem to make sense to the casual observer using common sense and garden hose
 experience.  

The best way to get an idea of the difference between large and small chambers, baffle considerations aside, is to pluck on a guitar string.  If you excite the string 3" from the bridge, you get a full sound with a lot of tonal
 variations depending on how hard you pick the string.  If you excite the string 1" from the bridge, you get a smaller, more compact sound that has a lot of highs and very little tonal variation, regardless of how hard you
 pick the string.

Similar to string picking on the guitar, the saxophone reed excites the sound wave off-apex.  The size of the chamber (reed channel) influences just where that will be.  A large chamber is like picking 3" from the bridge, a small chamber is like picking 1" from the bridge, and a medium "squeeze" chamber is like picking 2" from the bridge.






--- On Fri, 2/22/13, Matthew <matthewvossjazz@...> wrote:

From: Matthew <matthewvossjazz@...>
Subject: [MouthpieceWork] francois louis
To: MouthpieceWork@yahoogroups.com
Date: Friday, February 22, 2013, 4:15 PM
















 



  


    
      
      
      Hi all-



Its been a while since I watched this video but at 20:45 he suggests that if you want to play a large chamber it would also make sense to play a bigger tip and harder reed.  He goes on to say you can only move so much air through a smaller tip so "why do you need a big chamber?"



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De63DLaD3MM&feature=youtu.be



While I couldn't necessarily explain the science of what's going on with the air/waves after moving past the tip and baffle, I've always associated certain timbral colors and qualities with large chamber mouhpieces as opposed to smaller narrow chamber pieces regardless of tip size.



His comments seems a bit arbitrary to me and would love to hear some ideas about what he might be getting at.



matt